Source?

This article appears to simply be a fan's interpretation without any sources. 98.182.42.245 08:13, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Well, the 'sources' are not really an specific statements from the books though i suppose i could add them. Historically and throughout the books animals have been 'used' in this way. This is why students bring animals to Hogwarts in the first place. You don't think they just want a student to have a 'pet', do you? And why just a toad/owl/cat etc? And why do these animals do the 'bidding' of wizards, or rather work with wizards for magic? There's historical reasons for these and that's what the article is about. Mafalda Hopkirk 16:04, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't recall the term "familiar" ever being used in the series to refer to animals kept by witches and wizards. Yes, there are parallels between the magical pets of Harry Potter and the familiars of folklore, but since JKR has never explicitly introduced these magical pets as "familiars," I think it's original research to state that this is what they're intended to be. It would be like stating in the werewolf article that werewolves can only be killed with silver bullets because this is a recurrent element in fantasy fiction. I don't see a problem with keeping this article if we limit its content to an out-of-universe exploration of folklore that might've inspired elements in the HP books. But we'll need to be careful to avoid presenting familiars are a canonical concept. ★Starstuff(Owl me!) 02:53, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Last time I checked, this was a Wiki for Harry Potter, not a for real-world folklore about witches and wizards. The only time this type of thing is appropriate for this wiki is when it's directly addressed in the books, and even then, only in the context of the books. What you've done here is taken a real-world concept that JKR may or may not have drawn inspiration from when she was writing the novel, and tried to present it as canonical fact. At most, the concept of animal familiars should only be a footnote in the Owl article, and even then, it would need to be made very clear that it's only a possible inspiration for their use in the Harry Potter universe, and not canonical fact. --Twilight Duality 08:42, September 19, 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I agree. This sounds totally made-up. I always interpreted the pets in the books to be merely pets. Harry refers to Hedwig as his owl many, many times and other students similarly refer to their pets. There is never any sign that there is any particularly special or magical relationship between pets and their owners. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 96.242.132.198 (talk • contribs).

"Familiars"

I was just coming in to ask the same thing I see thas already been discussed: I don't remember any mentions of "familiars", or even descriptions of animals that "cannot be 'owned'; rather, they are a consciousness in their own right and deserving of great respect", which I'm guessing is something specific to the concept of a familiar. All told, I'm with the above -- the article treats "familiars" (and extrapolated facts about them from real-world folklore) as canonical facts about the Harry Potter universe, which simply isn't the case. - Caswin 18:53, December 8, 2010 (UTC)

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